The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [98]
He looked out at the scenery flashing by. The farmland was lush and green—patterned fields with artfully drawn hedgerows. It seemed so calm and orderly. When he rode the night train from Paris to Toulouse in the spring of 1944, he saw at dawn the vacant fields, tinged mint green, and he was sad that the farmers had to grow food for their enemy, not their own people. He thought he remembered feeling this. But maybe not. His thoughts then centered on saving his own hide—staying quiet, keeping a wary eye on the German soldiers on the train, steeling himself to show no surprise if there was a loud noise. He was supposed to be a deaf-mute. He remembered how he had hidden his head behind a newspaper. He dozed and pretended to doze. Another airman was at the rear of the car. They were to have no contact, pass no signals. Robert was in the front of the car, and another girl guide, who seemed a bit older than Annette, rode in the car behind. The other airmen in the group were scattered throughout the train.
Now the conductor operated on Marshall’s ticket. The station of Tours was already being called, and the train would arrive in Angoulême soon. For a moment, Marshall saw in the conductor the outline of a German officer asking for his papers.
Monique said Annette might talk if he asked, but he didn’t know whether he should. It was time he did something right, he thought, but he didn’t know what that was.
44.
“YOU ARE HERE AGAIN!” ANNETTE SAID, OPENING HER ARMS WIDE like her smile.
While she performed the three-cheek kiss, he breathed in the lavender on her skin, in her hair.
“I use lavender for everything,” she explained. “My husband used it on the animals. It was good for their coats. It assassinated the insects.”
She approved of his new boots.
They sat on her terrace again, and Bernard, who had greeted him happily, established himself on the stones between them.
“We are at leisure!” she said. “We have nothing that must be done. We are here, and we have a beautiful summer day.”
Her twinkling eyes contained irony, humor, history, depth. She was full of laughter, and her hands were animated, her manners less formal than before. Something had changed. Just as he was drawing back, she seemed to be advancing.
She stared into his eyes. “It is still hard to believe that you came to find me so many years after the war. You are the only one. I couldn’t search for any of you. I wanted to let the past go. I was in my life, each day—a son, a daughter, a husband, the animals.
“There was only one of the boys who was contemptuous of our circumstances. He demanded his cigarettes. He complained about our food.” She laughed. “I took him on a tour of Paris. I showed him the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, everything, and he was disdainful. I asked him, ‘Do you have anything like that in America?’ and he said, ‘No, but if we wanted stuff like this, we would buy it!’ ”
“An exceptionally ugly American,” Marshall said. “We’re not all like him.”
“No.” She smiled. “I do not know what happened to him. I did not go forth to find any of you. I had enough warm memories, and I wanted to keep them.”
“You and your family took a lot of risks,” he ventured.
“It was as though we had started on a rough crossing together, my parents and I, and we had chosen the most arduous course. As if we had a rowboat when we needed a battleship.”
“You were just a girl,” he said, after a moment. “How could your parents involve you? I mean, sending a young girl